Staff Software Engineer - Risk

As a Staff Software Engineer - Risk at Clear Street, your main responsibilities include architecting new backend services and designing storage solutions for risk-based metrics. You'll also optimize data models for efficient reporting, create data ingestion pipelines in a distributed environment, and collaborate with various teams to ensure seamless integration of technical designs that meet business needs.

To be considered for the Staff Software Engineer - Risk position at Clear Street, candidates are expected to have at least 10 years of professional engineering experience. This includes expertise in implementing scalable backend services using statically typed languages like Go or Java, experience with data-wrangling using scripting languages like Python, and familiarity with microservice architectures. Strong communication skills for effective collaboration with stakeholders are also essential.

In the role of Staff Software Engineer - Risk at Clear Street, you will work with an impressive tech stack including Go, Python, Java, gRPC, Kafka, PostgreSQL, Snowflake, Redis, Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS. Familiarity with data modeling, API design, and stream processing using tools like Beam and Flink will also be beneficial.

Clear Street is committed to promoting growth and development for all employees, including Staff Software Engineers - Risk. Aside from competitive salaries and equity packages, the company emphasizes a culture of collaboration where individuals can learn from each other and celebrate successes, fostering an environment that nurtures skill enhancement and career advancement.

Starting January 2023, Clear Street requires employees, including Staff Software Engineers - Risk, to be in the office four days a week. This hybrid approach promotes teamwork and collaboration, enhanced by in-office perks like lunch stipends, stocked kitchens, and great views, ensuring a balanced work environment.

Highlight your previous projects where you designed backend services, discussing how you approached scalability challenges. Use examples demonstrating your ability to manage increasing loads using statically typed languages like Go or Java while ensuring robustness and performance.

Discuss your methodologies for creating efficient data models, such as normalization versus denormalization, and how you align them with storage requirements for reporting. Use examples from past projects to illustrate your problem-solving capabilities in this area.

Explain your experience with data ingestion, focusing on the tools and frameworks you've used. Discuss best practices you've implemented to ensure reliability, efficiency, and scalability in the pipelines, emphasizing how these have impacted overall system performance.

Provide an example where you successfully worked with non-technical stakeholders, explaining the situation, your approach to communication, and how you ensured that technical requirements were understood and met from all parties involved.

Share specific examples of projects where you've implemented microservice architecture. Highlight the benefits you saw, any challenges faced, and how you addressed issues related to service connectivity, data consistency, and deployment.

Discuss your techniques for keeping abreast of industry trends and advancements, such as following blogs, participating in online communities, attending conferences, or taking online courses. Mention how this continuous learning has benefited your work.

Explain your testing strategies, including unit tests, integration tests, and possibly automated testing frameworks. Emphasize the importance of ensuring the reliability and stability of services before deployment to production.

Describe your familiarity with risk methodologies like Reg-T and Portfolio Margin. Provide examples of how you have applied them in past projects and the impact this knowledge has had on developing risk management systems.

Talk about your strategies for identifying and managing technical debt, incorporating practices like code reviews, refactoring, and establishing a backlog for technical improvements. Highlight situations where you turned technical debt into a manageable aspect of project development.

Share what excites you about working at the intersection of technology and finance. Discuss Clear Street's mission and how it resonates with your career goals, particularly in modernizing the brokerage ecosystem.